There was redness in the west and in the cloud-bank overhead. To the east gray sky became a deeper gray--much deeper. It was not yet time for the creatures of the day to seek their hiding-places, nor for the night-insects to come forth. But in many secret spots there were vague and sleepy stirrings. Heedless of the approaching darkness Burl sped over an open space a hundred yards across. A thicket of beautifully golden mushrooms barred his way. Danger lay there. He dogged aside and saw in the gray dusk a glistening sheet of white, barely a yard above the ground. It was the web of the morning-spider which, on Earth, was noted only in hedges and such places when the dew of earliest dawn exposed it as a patternless plate of diamond-dust. There were anchor-cables, of course, but no geometry. Tidy housewives--also on Earth--used to mop it out of corners as a filmy fabric of irritating gossamer. On the forgotten planet it was a net with strength and bird-lime qualities that increased day by day, as its spinner moved restlessly over the surface, always trailing sticky cord behind itself. Burl had no choice but to avoid it, even though he lost ground to the ant-horde roaring behind him. And night was definitely on the way. It was inconceivable that a human should travel in the lowlands after dark. It literally could not be done over the normal nightmare terrain. Burl had not only to escape the army ants, but find a hiding-place quickly if he was to see tomorrow's light. But he could not think so far ahead, just now. He blundered through a screen of puffballs that shot dusty powder toward the sky. Ahead, a range of strangely colored hills came into view--purple, green, black and gold--melting into each other and branching off, inextricably mingled. They rose to a height of perhaps sixty or seventy feet. A curious grayish haze had gathered above them. It seemed to be a layer of thin vapor, not like mist or fog, clinging to certain parts of the hills, rising slowly to coil and gather into an indefinitely thicker mass above the ridges. The hills themselves were not geological features, but masses of fungus that had grown and cannibalized, piling up upon themselves to the thickness of carboniferous vegetation. Over the face of the hills grew every imaginable variety of yeast and mould and rust. They grew within and upon themselves, forming freakish conglomerations that piled up into a range of hills, stretching across the lunatic landscape for miles.